Saint-Géraud, border town of Gironde, 91 inhabitants – including around forty of voting age – and 10 official signs for the compulsory display of candidates. “To respect the law and expose the 38 lists, we recovered the old tables from the village hall, which we fixed with stakes, and vertical tape to separate the candidates,” explains Mayor Denis Morvan. A system D constrained in the face of the constellation of political formations or movements of thought, committed to the renewal of the European Parliament.
“I am not sure that these 38 lists go in the direction of participation”, euphemizes the first councilor, who already knows that the smallest candidates will not deliver posters to put up, and have invited their voters to come with their ballot papers, previously printed on the Internet.
In Boussès, the mayor decided to divide each panel into three.
Loïc Déquier / SO
Diving 60 kilometers to the south, in the heart of the Landes de Gascogne, the commune of Boussès holds the departmental record for the lowest number of inhabitants: 36, and 0.8 per m². “From memory, 32 registered on the electoral lists,” says the mayor, François Thollon Pommerol. A lower number, therefore, this year, than that of the heads of lists entered for the European elections of June 9. “Elections are fundamental in democracy. But this display obligation at 38 forces us to make a nasty adaptation. This year we decided to reduce the size of each location, dividing it into three. A resizing seemed more reasonable to us so that everyone had the same display surface in accordance with equal opportunities. But we are not quite on target compared to the planned size…”
Pallets, ping-pong tables…
Nicolas Lacombe, mayor of Nérac, 6e city of Lot-et-Garonne in the ranking in terms of population, pointed out the incongruity of the process via a publication on Facebook. His town has 16 display points, the teacher quickly multiplied: 608 panels would be necessary to display the electoral banners. “It’s a lot of logistics, a significant cost for the State and a lot of time spent on this task for municipal agents… This year, I chose not to deploy the 38 panels, but it has everything I also had to buy sheets of plywood. It’s temporary DIY, and not very sustainable development…” points out the councilor, who has already seen pallets, old boards and ping-pong tables used as support in the surrounding communities.
His counterpart from Landes de Gascogne agrees with him on the obsolete use of this obligation. “I have no great certainty about the impact of this display, and the reach in a rural area like ours. In Boussès, there is no town center, just a few houses around the town hall. How many people will pass by during the week? », calculates François Thollon Pommerol, without being certain that all the candidate posters will be brought by the delivery man.
Always more candidates
“At the time when the first electoral posters were posted in the towns, they included the details of each candidate’s program. Today, we know that this is not what the vote is about. People obtain information differently and each voter receives the professions of faith and the ballot papers, in envelopes, at their home. We waste a lot of time and energy, especially during the European elections. This is the most glaring, because with each election, we find ourselves with even more candidates: 34 in 2019, 38 in 2024…”, lists Nicolas Lacombe.
However, still a long way from the 89 candidates who set out to attack the northern canton of Villeneuve-sur-Lot in 1995. Around a hundred meters were then necessary to line up the official signs…
>> Find all the results of the European elections in Lot-et-Garonne
